He lay down in the ditch and plugged the wound with another piece of wadding from his jacket.
This wound in his side was mortal and he felt that he was dying.
One after another images and memories flashed through his mind.
Now he saw the mighty Abununtsal Khan clasping to his face his severed, hanging cheek and rush ing at his enemies with dagger drawn; he saw Vorontsov, old, feeble and pale with his sly, white face and heard his soft voice; he saw his son Yusuf, Sofiat his wife, and the pale face, red beard and screwed up eyes of his enemy Shamil.
And these memories running through his mind evoked no feelings in him, no pity, ill-will or desire of any kind.
It all seemed so insignificant compared to what was now beginning and had already begun for him.
But his powerful body meanwhile continued what it had started to do.
Summoning the last remnants of his strength, he lifted himself above the rampart and fired his pistol at a man running towards him.
He hit him and the man fell.
Then he crawled completely out of the ditch and, with his dagger drawn and limping badly, went straight at the enemy.
Several shots rang out. He staggered and fell.
A number of militiamen rushed with a triumphant yell towards his fallen body.
But what they supposed was a dead body suddenly stirred.
First his bloodstained, shaven head, its papakha gone, then his body lifted; then, holding on to a tree, Hadji Murad pulled himself fully up.
He looked so terrifying that the advancing men stopped dead.
But suddenly he gave a shudder, staggered from the tree, and like a scythed thistle fell full length on his face and moved no more.
He did not move, but could still feel, and when Hadji-Aha, the first to reach him, struck him across the head with his great dagger, he felt he was being hit on the head with a hammer and failed to understand who was doing this and why.
This was the last conscious link with his body.
He felt no more, and the object that was trampled and slashed by his enemies had no longer any connection with him.
Hadji-Alla put a foot on the body’s back, with two strokes hacked off its head and rolled it carefully away with his foot so as not to get blood on his boots.
Blood gushed over the grass, scarlet from the neck arteries, black from the head.
Karganov, Hadji-Aha, Aklmlet-Khan and the militiamen gathered over the bodies of Hadji Murad and his men (Khanefi, Kurban and Gamzalo were bound) like hunters over a dead beast, standing among the bushes in the gunsmoke, gaily chatting and celebrating their victory.
The nightingales, which were silent while the shooting lasted, again burst into Song, first one near by, then others in the distance.
This was the death that was brought to my mind by the crushed thistle in the ploughed field.